172 NATURAL INHERITANCE. [CHAP.
of cases. My material admits of no such delicacy of division ; nevertheless it leads to some results worth mentioning.
In sorting my cases, I included under the head of Consumption all the causes of death described by one or the other following epithets, attention being also paid to the context, and to the phraseology used elsewhere by the same writer :-Consumption; Phthisis ; Tubercular disease ; Tuberculosis ; Decline ; Pulmonary, or lung disease ; Lost lung; Abscess on lung ; Haemorrhage of lungs (fatal) ; Lungs affected (here especially the context was considered). All of these were reckoned as actual Consumption.
In addition to these there were numerous phrases of doubtful import that excited more or less reasonable suspicion. It may be that the disease had not sufficiently declared itself to justify more definite language, or else that the phrase employed was a euphemism to veil a harsh truth. Paying still more attention to the context than before, I classed these doubtful cases under three heads:-(I) Highly suspicious ; (2) Suspicious ; (3) Somewhat suspicious. They were so rated that four cases of the first should be reckoned equivalent to three cases of actual consumption, four cases of the second to two cases, and four of the third to one case.
The following is a list of some of the phrases so dealt with. The occasional appearance of the same phrase under different headings is due to differences in the context:
1. Highly suspicious :-Consumptive tendency, Con-
